


Friends With Benefits #3

by Perfica



Series: Friends With Benefits [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-03
Updated: 2004-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:27:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perfica/pseuds/Perfica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Midnight meetings in the owlery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends With Benefits #3

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an alternative reality where Harry is over eighteen and attending Hogwarts.

If it had stopped after the first time, Harry could have thought of it as an aberration, a product of his grieving mind (although why his mind would throw this out as comfort was a mystery to him). But it hadn’t stopped, and by Harry’s counting had continued fourteen times after.

This is the fifteenth time, he thought as he made his way silently up to the Owlery. Fifteen times, if I haven’t counted wrong, and if he’s here, if he comes…

But Harry has no doubts that he’ll be there. He hasn’t missed a Sunday once they’d started – no meeting with Albus, no summons from Voldemort, no detention had disturbed their routine.

Sunday.

Midnight.

It is their time.

Soundlessly - that’s how they move.

Harry has perfected the art of moving in stealth, twice-shielded by Invisibility cloak and his desire to remain secret. Silent footsteps carry him from the tower on the stroke of midnight. Pausing and holding his breath carries him around Filch and other night stalkers.

His feet whisper as they slide over fallen feathers and dried carcasses.

He throws the cloak off and waits, standing on the precipice, looking out into the blanket of dark that is Hogwarts at night.

Silent, still, Sunday.

His left hand caresses his pocket. The letter is folded with a sharp crease and is soft with repeated handling.

Come back, Sirius. I miss you, Sirius.

Don’t leave me, Sirius.

Even after all this time, even though it is going on ten months and neither hide nor hair of his godfather had been seen, Harry hopes without real hope. He has no expectation that his wishes will come true, but he carries the parchment with him everywhere.

It is different now – the owls don’t seem to avoid him anymore. When he first started his weekly pilgrimage, they would strut nervously on their perches -brown, black, brown-eyed, tawny-eyed - looking at him with the slightly shocked expressions of their species.

He thought they disbelieved him. He knew they had no faith in him. He suspected they thought him mad. He suspected that they were right.

Only Hedwig would come. He would raise his arm and coax her down, but no matter how hard he pleaded, she would not take his letter.

He used to be angry at that; call her all manner of things, degrade her talent, mock her usefulness, weep and beg that she please, please, take this to Sirius.

She would rub her beak against his cheek and hoot mournfully, tracing the tears that ran down his face. But she would not accept the letter. The pet had more sense than the master.

So he would come anyway. There is silence (which is always a good thing). There is the cold clarity of night where he can forget and pretend. At first he would pretend it wasn’t real, any of it. The seven days and six nights that he had to live, to be himself, were only an awful dream to be travelled through until he could reach that one night of the week where he was alone. Where he could be.

Boys don’t cry. Men don’t cry. Harry was both and neither and he did, for Sunday’s in a row.

He would sit against the wall, knees pressed hard into his chest, fingering the parchment obsessively while Hedwig silently stood guard, staring at the other owls as if to say, “Don’t you look at him like that. Don’t you harm him. He is mine.”

He isn’t sure how many Sundays Snape stood in the shadows and watched him. Harry doubts very many had passed before he caught on to the fact.

Snape makes no sound as he walks, the wind currents themselves seem under his spell. There is only a slight breeze that turns the feathers near Harry’s feet, that wafts the cosy, acidic smell of owls and mice and straw into his nose. Snape is without sound, without smell, without substance.

And that’s why Harry can stand him, but only here. He is a spectre in this place, much like Harry is in the daylight hours. In the owlery, their positions are reversed. Harry feels himself becoming substantial, gaining not only weight but mass. He thinks clearer, and if his thoughts haven’t changed much (Please Sirius, come back. I miss you), at least he is constant. Snape slides into shadows and loses density. Perhaps he gives it to Harry? Maybe they share, and only one of them can be real at any given time.

For weeks Snape must have stood there looking at him, although Harry doesn’t know why the man allowed it to happen. He was Harry Potter, and that alone should have been enough to cause Snape to send him to bed, or to drag him by the arm to the Headmasters office.

Look, Albus. See what the boy does now. He is without merit. He flaunts our rules.

He cares not for himself.

He is deluded.

He tries to communicate with the fallen.

But that doesn’t happen and when Harry occasionally thinks clearly during the day - blank eyes staring and blinking at his friends - he thinks he may be starting to understand why.

At first it was a touch. Harry, mewling like a sick kitten, crawled out from the shadows and rested his head on Snape’s feet. “He hated you. Bring him back.”

The feet were his rock, his whole universe because they didn’t move. When Harry woke up, the feet were gone.

The next Sunday he didn’t expect Snape to be there, but just before one o’clock, he allowed himself to be seen. A swish of cloak, a patch of nothingness against the wall. Harry was whispering to Hedwig, trying to convince her to take the letter. None of the other owls would come near him -perhaps they smelt insanity and had no wish to be infected.

“Come,” Snape said, and Hedwig flew to him willingly.

Harry was betrayed by his only ally.

“He is not coming back,” Snape said without malice.

“He hated you,” Harry agreed.

On unwilling feet, Harry stumbled towards him. He rested his forehead on the hollow of Snape’s neck and breathed. That was allowed for some time before Harry spoke again. “I hate you,” he lied.

“Liar,” he was called and a hand rubbed the back of his neck. Hours passed, stars were born and died, and still they stood, still as statues, hand on neck and forehead on neck the only skin touching, the only living pieces of themselves.

Time moved on, the year progressed, and hands went under clothes. Cool fingers and rough hands lay dormant on flesh.

“He’s not coming back,” Harry murmured, his palm resting on Snape’s hip.

“He loved you,” Snape agreed, his cheek resting on Harry’s temple.

Seasons passed, leaves were born, withered and were set free, screaming without mouths as they fell to their deaths. Harry started to taste food again.

Winter struck and the owls huddled together for warmth. Harry shivered and blew on his hands before he put them on Snape’s neck. Snape was not so kind and Harry got goose bumps wherever his frigid fingers touched.

They always stood. The owls twitched in their sleep and mostly ignored them. Harry started to feel alive again.

Harry slid his hand under Snape’s shirt and stroked his nipple. “I still hate you.”

Snape’s fingers wriggled like worms against his lower back and he disagreed. “But I hate you.”

They pressed into each other, shirts pulled up to their necks like prepubescent school boys hiding behind the canteen, torso against torso, slow breathing making their skin rub against each other. Guilty, secretive movements.

Harry clutched Snape’s hair and licked his neck. He nibbled for centuries, wanting to eat the man.

Snape turned them around and ground Harry into the wall, moving sinuously, thrusting their covered cocks together in precise movements.

Thrust.

Push.

Swivel.

Thigh between thigh.

Cock on cock.

Harry pulled his shirt up higher and writhed his shoulders so that their nipples rubbed against each other. He smiled at Snape like a child given a gold star.

This is how they do it now. Cloaks thrown aside. Jackets unpeeled. Glasses kept on because Harry wants to see what’s happening.

He takes his position against the wall, legs slightly apart and shirt open. He puts his hands above his head. His wrists are pale and unblemished in the moonlight.

Snape steps forward, undoing the buttons of his own shirt so it hangs loose and lank like his hair. He tilts his hips into Harry’s until they fit like a jigsaw puzzle.

Their knees lock.

He holds Harry’s hands above his head as if he’s captured him. Their foreheads touch and each tries to maintain eye contact - because to look away is to lose.

Snape’s hips flex and he drives into Harry. Harry grunts and spreads his feet further apart. Snape adjust his position until it is perfect, until their lengths line up and each thrust is a fuck, each snap of the hips proclaiming “Fuck you world, look what I’m doing.”

Snape grins as he dry humps Harry. It’s never felt this good.

Harry breathes funny and licks his lips over and over again, watching Snape’s eyes watch his tongue. He likes being watched and moves his tongue slowly, sloppily. He likes being on display.

He laughs, “You don’t hate me anymore.”

“Neither do you.”

Thrust.

Fuck.

Thrust.

In the beginning, Snape would come first. Maybe he’d been eager for it for too long. Maybe Harry didn’t know how to feel anymore. Snape would grunt at the wetness and press his thigh hard against Harry’s balls. Harry would look at him with excitement – he was close, he was closer, he was coming. Now it is a competition to see who can hold out the longest. Harry cheats by licking his lips. Snape cheats by talking dirty.

This Sunday Harry says ‘No’ and Snape is baffled. Harry’s chest is bare and his hairless nipples rub over Snape’s chest as Harry lines their bodies up, sliding his chest side to side.

“Don’t move,” Harry says, lifting Snape’s hands until they are lying flat-palmed on the stone above Harry’s head.

“Be quiet,” Harry says as he carefully pulls down the zipper of his own jeans, extracting his erection from its prison and bringing it out into the open. He looks at it proudly.

Snape follows orders and doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound. Harry carefully plucks at the ties that hold Snape’s pants together and brings his cock out. It is hard and angry looking. He’s close already.

Harry wraps his fingers around the two together and is slightly amazed that his hand is big enough to do so.

“Look,” Harry says in wonder, showing Snape what they look like lined up together. His right hand holds them rigid, the fingers of his left ghosting over the tips, mixing fluid and teasing the most delicate parts of their bodies. Even at this time, Snape smirks. Harry chuckles and lets a finger run delicately between their two tips, combining their essences. He lifts the finger to Snape’s mouth. Snape licks it, his eyes never leaving Harry’s. Harry returns the wet digit to their leaking cockheads, rubbing it over the sensitive flesh. He gathers up their juices and sticks the finger into his own mouth, sucking it dry.

His right hand squeezes, reminding them both of where they are.

“Gentle now,” Harry says and Snape complies, moves slowly, no force behind his thrust as his light movements rub them together. They both look down on where they are joined. Harry’s fingers squeeze tighter but he doesn’t pump his hand.

“Look at that,” he says with a smile, watching red and purple flesh trapped and fondled inside his tight hand. He squeezes them together. Snape bites his lip and thrusts harder.

“Harry,” he says, and Harry looks up at him almost in love.

They press and they thrust. They dry-hump. They fake fuck.

They kiss.


End file.
